The game runs at 320x240 pixels, and is scaled up to 2x for enhanced playability. Full mouse picking support is implemented, so I can detect exactly what pixel on any surface (wall, floor, sprite) the mouse pointer is currently hovering. The engine supports non-orthogonal walls with no slowdown, but I kinda like the blocky look.

I really, really want to finish this game, so I decided to not use any placeholder graphics, but rather draw everything myself (mostly in paint.net), and it's going better than I hoped. Obviously, those monsters aren't final, but I like the look of the rest.

Doesn't seem to accept input in opera 9.5. :/Tried it in Firefox, works great. Feels very solid. Movement - and the little bouncing up and down - feels just perfect. I admit to thinking "oh, another columns-raycasting game..." when I saw the screenshot, but it has a great feel to it. Slightly too dark for my taste, and you might want some sky for the woods

I updated my post above while you were writing your response, have a look. Oh, and you really should switch that screenshot - since they'll never see the dynamics again, screenshots should always show as much as you possibly can to attract interest - that's my opinion, in any case

EDIT: Also, I never understood why these games always have so low ceilings... :> Why not make it a head or two higher?

EDIT2: Personally I'd switch Q/E for A/D (turn with A/D) since turning is the primary movement option... but if you're going to incorporate mouse turning somehow then stick with it the way it is.

It is an excellent start! It is fast! I will put this in the incubator in the Java(tm) Game Tome, it will be transfered in the list of games when it is more complete. Keep it up! I'm very happy to see a new project of 3D game written in Java!

The first news posted on the Tome will speak about your game. Please let me know the following information:- who work on this project (full name)?- what are the technologies involved in the project? Which API? Which engine? Which algorithms for rendering (hardware, software: raycasting, raytracing...) ?- what is the category of the game?- what is the story?

If you prefer, write this article and I will post it when the news system is ready. See this as an encouragement.

Just one point, please check if it works fine under Opera. It works fine under Firefox and Iceweasel as far as I know.

- who work on this project (full name)?Markus Persson, under the alias Mojang Specifications

- what are the technologies involved in the project? Which API? Which engine? Which algorithms for rendering (hardware, software: raycasting, raytracing...) ?It uses 100% pure java. I'm going for a definite retro feeling (see the screenshots above), so the game is designed for 320x240 pixels, plus it really helps the framerate.The rendering:The floor is a rotozoomer, with some really slow perspective math. It's fast enough, though. The walls, like in Doom, heavily abuse the fact that they're always aligned to the screen in the y-axis. To get perspective long x, I interpolate over 1/z (which is linear in screen space, yay), and over u*z, which also happens to be linear in screen space.Sprites are basically just scaled images checked against the zbuffer.So far, the only thing written to any buffers has been color information, z depth information, and a brightness value per pixel. This brightness is only used for shading walls, and might get optimized away in the future.When everything has been written, I iterate over the entire screen, calculating true distance based on the z depth information, multiply that by the brightness and the color, then write that to the pixel buffer. I do things this way to avoid having to do the fairly heavy lighting math for each pixel, reducing overdraw, and to keep all the lighting math in a single place.

Walls closest to the player gets rendered first, and there's NO overdraw and NO z-buffer checking at all when rendering walls, thanks to some seriously heavy culling.Sprites, however, cause quite a bit of overdraw.

- what is the category of the game?It's a Role Playing Game, meant to feel something like a mix between ultima underworld, eye of the beholder, and dungeon master/dungeon master 2, except possibly a bit more modern.

- what is the story?I haven't come up with a non-embarrassing story, yet. Probably something about fetching something important, hehe.

Really cool, I've always been a fan of Dungeon Master and this looks like it's going to be an enhanced, more action oriented version.Input also doesn't work here on opera, and there seems to be a bit of flickering sometimes. Works great on IE though.

Get Java 1.6 on Apple ADC as my teacher did last year if you can't get it via software update. If Java 1.6 hadn't worked on Mac, my teacher would have been unable to test my project and I would have got a pretty 0/20.

Get Java 1.6 on Apple ADC as my teacher did last year if you can't get it via software update. If Java 1.6 hadn't worked on Mac, my teacher would have been unable to test my project and I would have got a pretty 0/20.

I guess I should have said, "it doesn't work for the average Mac user."

Java 6 applets on Mac OS X require a 64-bit browser and a user savvy enough to change the default from Java 5. (Or a user savvy enough to use appletviewer). My Mac stats from the past few weeks are showing 10% Java 1.4, 90% Java 5, 0% Java 6. Something to keep in mind when you want to target a wide audience.

I guess I should have said, "it doesn't work for the average Mac user."

Java 6 applets on Mac OS X require a 64-bit browser and a user savvy enough to change the default from Java 5. (Or a user savvy enough to use appletviewer). My Mac stats from the past few weeks are showing 10% Java 1.4, 90% Java 5, 0% Java 6. Something to keep in mind when you want to target a wide audience.

You're right, only 4 different mac users succeeded to launch my game as far as I know but you should have said "it doesn't work for the average Mac user.". Nevertheless, maybe the author has some particular reasons to use Java 1.6, I know it is my case and I don't use Java 1.6 to bother mac users.

Hihi, found test render of an earlier version of the engine, with placeholder art stolen from google somewhere, and a really hacked together ball particle engine:

The engine supports rendering to disk at 30 fps regardless of actual framerate. If you've got lower fps than 30, it'll still render (exactly) 30 fps to disk. The game will obviously run at lower than normal speed when that happens, but playing back the video will show it at full speed.

New version up, seems to accept keyboard input in opera, although you might have to click the applet TWICE (for some reason..) first. And the framerate REALLY sucks in opera. :-( [edit:] No, it doesn't, nevermind.

There are items you can pick up now. =D Check out the woods.

Oh, and I've added some more keys for moving around; the arrow keys and the numpad. Also, it should work on java 1.5 now.

1.5 works great - love it - Eye of the Beholder in an applet! Especially like the particles & jiving zombies I'd slow the walk down a bit though - make 'em scared to turn that corner... Get it fully functional and here's a very playable game!

New version up, seems to accept keyboard input in opera, although you might have to click the applet TWICE (for some reason..) first. And the framerate REALLY sucks in opera. :-( [edit:] No, it doesn't, nevermind.

There are items you can pick up now. =D Check out the woods.

Oh, and I've added some more keys for moving around; the arrow keys and the numpad. Also, it should work on java 1.5 now.

Could you use Z too to walk forward please? It is not used yet and it would be easier for french users.

It worked on Mac os X Leopard, starting it with the appletviewer. Good framerate. This looks really promising. But I know that it is a huge amount of work to build something with a story. I have tried it.

The engine looks nice but the textures could be a little bit more highres. Is it possible? What is the plans? Need help?